MEET THE FELLOWS: Oliver Romero
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| Dr. Oliver Romero is one of three UCSF Fresno pulmonary fellows. UCSF Fresno's was the only pulmonary program nationwide to receive 2007 accreditation. |
He’s one of three UCSF Fresno pulmonary fellows who began work at Community Regional Medical Center this past summer. The pulmonary program was the only one nationwide to receive 2007 accreditation.
The program will bring in three new fellows each year for the two-year program, with the goal of attracting more specialists to the Valley.
As part of a series of stories introducing the new fellows, MedWatch Today sat down to meet Dr. Romero.
Hometown: Quezon City, Philippines
Education: University of the Philippines, Erasmus University, UCSF Fresno
What got you interested in UCSF Fresno and Community?
I applied everywhere, and what brought me to California was my wife, who was studying to be a dentist then. She was going to Loma Linda University in Southern California.
And it’s just a program that I liked when I visited. And when I narrowed down my choices, and they offered me a spot here, it was a no-brainer. I had to drive up and down four or five hours every two weekends or so to be with my wife, and that was worth it. And of course, UCSF is a very prestigious name program. And I like the setup where there’s a very strong tie with the university.
Being here at Community right now with all the progress that’s being made, you’re seeing a sway toward the academic side; is that exciting to be a part of?
Certainly we’re doing a lot more research…and the establishment of the fellowship program certainly kicks it up to a higher level where there’s specialized training. Whereas in residency you deal with practical stuff, general stuff, but now we can deal with more esoteric specialized knowledge and skills, and we’ll be at higher capacity to help people with more specialized problems.
On the other side, the Central Valley is also known to have a lot of patients who suffer from respiratory diseases, and I think it’s geography-related. We’re in the Valley so I guess all the pollution gets stuck in the center of California – trucks driving through, agricultural area. And as a consequence, a lot of people have airway disease, and I think that’s where we will be able to make a contribution as well. The program is expanding. Since I came into this program, we’ve hired at least four new faculty in general internal medicine as well as critical care/pulmonary medicine and everyone is great. …
So any way you look at it, you’re getting more doctors to help patients but you’re also increasing the mentors and advisors and the people who will pass down this knowledge to the residents and fellows.
What got you interested in the pulmonary side of things?
The program director at that time, Dr. Peterson, a pulmonary critical care specialist, and there were a lot of pulmonary critical care specialists among the faculty. And basically, seeing them as my role models. Working in the ICU, working in clinics, the way they conduct themselves during conferences, it’s very, very inspiring how they are able to come up with all these ideas. And they love to teach, everyone loves to teach. You try to emulate all the things that they do. …
Everyone in the critical care pulmonary faculty is great clinicians and excellent teachers, and I guess you get dragged into their line of work, their interest, it catches on. There’s a good conference that they hold every week, the chest conference, basically all these lung doctors, specialists and surgeons get together and discuss cases. They don’t always agree with what to do, but you see the way they think about treating the patients. To really reach that point where you’re able to have an intellectual exercise, it really speaks well of a lot of experience, and that’s something I hope to achieve at some point.
On a personal level, my grandfather, who I was very close to, he died of lung cancer. That’s one thing that actually you can really take out of smoking and education about smoking and lung diseases, it’s a potential niche where you can really help a lot of people. It’s difficult, there’s so much research going on in terms of how to help people quit smoking, and it’s hard. I’ve seen it with my patients.
The other extreme is critical care, and ICU is exciting. You’re faced with very sick patients, who can’t talk to you because most likely they’re connected to a ventilator, and you have to basically figure out what’s going on. It’s like every patient is a puzzle and you have to dig deep into your head to all the stuff you learned in medical school and residency. …
Tell me what this fellowship is going to bring to the Valley.
At this point the more pulmonary specialists you train, and if you train them here and they develop anchors in the area, they stay. And that’s basically the goal of UCSF Fresno, is to populate the Valley with doctors, with generalists, and at this point we’re going to be making contributions to the specialty fields as well.
This story was reported by Eddie Hughes. He can be reached at eddieh@communitymedical.org.